Philosophy Now Forum

the primary question of existence is basically this,
what does it mean to be a human being?

a dog is just a dog, nothing more, nothing less...
it can't be anything else but a dog...its programming,
instincts cannot be anything else...evolution has made that
dog into a dog.. is there such a thing as a universal dog?
no, each dog has its own quirks and past and programming...
but a dog also cannot be anything else, it can't be a cat or a moose or
an elephant...and I think programming is a very good word for both
dogs and human beings... our blood, our DNA, our instincts, our
past all combine to make us human....we cannot be mistaken for
anything other than human....but a universal human being does not
exists...

and part of the attempt to "universalize" human beings lie in the various
descriptions of human beings... since the Greeks, one description of
human beings has been a "rational creature"... Aristotle for example,
defined "man as being a rational animal" and the very basis of
philosophy depends on this description of man, "as a rational being"..

but having watched human beings for over 60 years, I can tell you
that this description is about as imperfect as can be, in fact, one
might say it is flat out wrong... when we talk about humans as
rational beings, that isn't reality, it is more of an "ought to be"..
"Human beings ought to be rational beings"
not this, "Human beings are rational beings"
because so much of human existence is not only irrational,
but this irrationality is encouraged by society...

a very human proposition is the basis of any society, state
is "the family unit"... the family unit is the basic building block
of the state and the society... and how does this basic building block
actual begin.. does it begin rationally or does it begin with the
most irrational action we pursue.. that of love... from
books to movies to plays to poems to ads on TV, this
pursuit of love is actively encouraged as the fundamental
basis of ours or any society/state.... (true or not is irrelevant)
and millions of people are encouraged to pursue and find love..
it might be the most fundamental action a human takes and love is
completely irrational and has no basis in logic or being rational....

to say, to be human is to be rational is to discount a basic,
fundamental aspect of being human.. that of love...love is
so fundamental in human existence that babies that have no love,
die... and a human being without love is lonely and unfulfilled...
one of the primary if not the primary goal of human existence is
to find love...a irrational act...and how does philosophy deal with
this completely irrational, but fundamentally basic action of being
human? Pretty much by ignoring it... name me a philosopher, outside
of Kierkegaard, who writes about love?

and one might say, correctly, Socrates did.. and Socrates
tried to make love or Eros as he called it, a rational, logical
thing.. but it is not...

and therein lies the problem with philosophy.. it
fails to account for a basic, fundamental aspect of
human existence...philosophy, a great deal of the time,
deals with what ought to be, instead of dealing with
humans as they are... think about 20th century
philosophy and who actually dealt with human beings
as they are, not as they ought to be? certainly not such
philosophers as Ayer, or Wittgenstein or Russell or Derrida..
or even Foucault.... ( he wrote about sex, but not about love)

The only philosophers that put the human in human beings is
the Existentialists.. they at least discussed such things as angst,
dread, fear... even Heidegger wrote about "the human condition"
in his thoughts about how people react to their upcoming death...
but even here, he rationalized about death, not as a real event
in someone's life... so which writings inform of what real people
think of death, Heidegger or Tolstoy.. in his "The death of
Ivan Ilyich"..... the truth is that Tolstoy is far closer to the
reality of death than any writer of philosophy is...a work of
fiction beats any work of philosophy in its understanding of
what it means to be human.... and the truth is that we are moved
by the truth/reality of plays, novels, poems, ART because
it is closer to the truth/reality of what it means to be human,
than any textbook of philosophy or history or economics or
science.... I can see myself in the poems of Walt Whitman,
whereas I can't see myself in Heidegger book, "Being and Time"

Most philosophy bores the crap out of me basically because
I can't see myself within its pages... I don't see real life
human beings in Plato, or in Descartes or within Wittgenstein...
I see rationality and logic but not what it means to be human,
especially considering that to be human is to embrace that
which is illogical or irrational... values that make us human, are
not logical or rational.... values like love, peace, hope, non-violence,
creativity, honor, loyalty, integrity, compassion, bliss, courage,
freedom, friendship for examples, are not by any stretch of
the imagination, logical or rational... but those values make up
what it means to be human...and philosophy will continue to fail
until it takes into account the reality of being human, which is
the irrational values like love and compassion and kindness
and hope....

philosophy can tell us what we ought to be, but it can't,
at present, tell us who we really are and what our
possibilities really are...

Kropotkin

so we continue on this tangent...
I see people all the time, act against their
own best interest... in fact, I see people
act in various ways that make no logical sense,
being gay or trans and voting for the GOP/MAGA party,
makes no logical sense.. being black and voting for
the GOP/MAGA party makes no sense of any kind..
and yet people vote against their very interest and values...
poor people voting for the GOP/MAGA party is not only
irrational, but is voting for a party that actively hates you
and does everything it can to reduce and eliminate you...

why would anyone in their right mind vote for a party
that clearly hates you? it is not rational or logical...
and yet people do just that.. vote for a party that is
trying to kill you....because a gay/trans person
using a bathroom in Ohio is not cause enough to vote
against your own interest, but the GOP/MAGA party gets
people to vote against their own interest to promote
a bigoted, prejudiced agenda, as it is called, "The Culture Wars"

or has I have personally seen and done, people who actively
work on their self-destruction... doing irrational, illogical things
that are downright self-destructive.. making irrational, illogical
choices that can only destroy oneself... been there, done that
as have you and most people for that matter....how does
philosophy answer the question as to why would anyone in
their right mind act against themselves or be self-destructive?

It makes no sense and yet, much of, and I do mean much of,
of human actions and responses are against themselves
and are self-destructive in very real ways...

not only can't philosophy answer that question, basically
philosophy can't even ask that question.. it implies
that people don't act logically or rationally.,..
and that violates the basic tenants of philosophy..
which is, "Human beings are rational beings"....

so what is one possible answer to this "crisis" of philosophy?
One possible solution is what the 20th century actually tried,
which is to mix or combine philosophy with psychology...
Perhaps one of the greatest philosophers of all time,
Nietzsche tried just that.. as did Kierkegaard, and not as well,
Sartre... in fact, existentialism is one such attempt to combine
and mix, philosophy and psychology...

psychology is an attempt to gain insight into the irrational,
the illogical, the unconscious part of being human....
in which novelists and writers and ARTISTS and
poets and playwrights have been investigating for
centuries... who stand closer to an understanding of
what it means to be human, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy
or Wittgenstein and Heidegger? That question is easy
enough to answer... is Raskolnikov, logical or rational?
and who best can tell us what his actions mean for us,
as human beings? A novelist's or a philosopher?

So ask yourself, is morality, ethics better served by
being a philosopher or being a novelist?
and perhaps that is why morality/ethics has not
advanced in 2000 years... because it has been the domain of
the philosopher instead of the novelist?

Kropotkin

Peter Kropotkin wrote: ↑Wed Jan 18, 2023 6:50 pm the primary question of existence is basically this,
what does it mean to be a human being?
.......

To understand what does it mean to be a human being is to analyze the human being in the whole perspective [whole jigsaw picture] of the Big Bang-to-present, with focus from the commencement of abiogenesis;



To understand the meaning of what is being human, we need philosophy which is meta- and all encompassing covering every aspects of the BB-to-present state of reality.

You are lost because you are merely focusing on some pieces of the jigsaw-puzzle of the BB-to-present state of reality with an adverse and negative attitude toward the necessity of philosophy-proper.

The meaning of what is being human comprised of the primary inherent and innate feature of human nature and the secondary features that vary [adaptive] with changing conditions.

Aristotle in right in identifying one fundamental of being human as a "rational being" which is very evident when humans-in-general are compared to all other living beings in general. This is an evident fact represented by a unique larger prefrontal cortex, you deny this?

The general view of "a philosophical take on human beings" is to understand what are primary and secondary features of human nature and how they aligned to the whole of the BB-to-present state of reality.